Install Docker-Compose

Docker-compose is a utility used to create and manage multiple Docker containers together to form a service. It relies on Docker being installed on the same host so make sure that Docker is installed on your system beforehand. Once you have docker installed and tested you’re ready to begin.

It’s worth noting that docker-compose is often available with your Linux distributions package manager, such as apt or yum but you may find they’re often out of date.

Manually installing docker-compose

Manually installing docker-compose is made easy by the fact that the docker-compose binary is a single file. The process is simple; grab the binary, put it in the right place and make it executable.

In addition to Docker, you’ll need curl installed to download the docker-compose binaries.

apt install curl
# Or
yum install curl

Once you have curl installed it’s time to install docker-compose. The below link will install the latest ‘stable’ release – if you need a different release you’ll need to check the github page for the version number you require.

Run the below commands to download docker-compose and link the binary to your linux bin directory.

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Test docker-compose

Finally, to test your docker-compose is working, run the below command to output the version of docker-compose. At the time of writing, the latest version was 1.24.1, but this will move as time goes on.

docker-compose --version
docker-compose version 1.24.1, build 4667896b